They say: "We need to have a discussion about mental illness" - OK, ready?

[ck4829]

Stop enabling mental illness to take hold in a person's life, there are so many things in this country that allow for a mental illness to flourish inside a person's mind, that disincentivizes a person from seeking treatment, and even exacerbates symptoms.

Those are the things we should talk about.

Mental illness is not a sign of sin or a personal failing.

Don't shame people who seek treatment, don't tell them to tough it out.

If you think someone is mentally ill, talk to them about it, tell them there is no shame in seeking treatment.

There is no script for mental illness, no appropriate way for them to act vs everyone else. A depressed person can still smile sometimes. There is no right or wrong way to experience and show grief or anxiety.

Stop linking traits you personally find disagreeable as mental illness. Being gay is not a mental illness, being transgender is not a mental illness, liberalism is not a mental illness, dyeing your hair blue is not a mental illness, etc.

Maybe it's time to stop assigning worth/value to people. Not worth enough to treat? Not good enough? Not valuable enough? But they still have 'point value' right?

It's time for everything to stop being a war on something. War on terror, war on cows (if you talk about the environmental damage industrial beef farming does for some reason), war on drugs, say "happy holidays" and that is apparently a war on Christmas. NO WONDER some of these men think they are living in Call of Duty.

We need to talk about money and the profit motive. Mental illness wrecks your life, the cost and effort associated with treating it can also wreck your life because it is so expensive. Mental illness doesn't mean stupid, guess what the path of least resistance is for not just the poor but even the middle class too? Not treating it. That needs to change.

And stop with this "crisis actor", "body double", "secret clone", "lizard-people" stuff, Qs. Those are REAL people with real bodies, minds, souls, identities, etc.

[Scrivener7]

1. No. When they say that we need to say, "You are full of shit. This is about guns."

Then we need to show them how all those other countries, all of whom include mentally ill citizens, don't have any gun massacres.

[Jerry2144]

2. And if they're serious on mental health issues

Then better fund mental healthcare, make it affordable and easy to get. Make it covered by all insurance. Make employers give paid time off to help with this care.


It’s so much easier for them to offer thoughts and prayers than it is for them to do something to help and to destigmatize mental health issues

[Wicked Blue]

4. Mental health care is increasingly hard to get, too

Many psychiatrists now refuse to accept any kind of insurance. They are being replaced by nurse-practitioners.

And it's almost impossible to find someone to do counseling because they are all booked solid. I have a relative who has been trying for many months to find a halfway decent therapist who accepts Medicaid.

[Jerry2144]

6. Exactly

We need to solve those problems. And we need politicians who will help. That means Team Blue all the way from county Parks and Recreation Commissioner all the way up to the Congress and White House (2024).

[Effete Snob]

5. Mass murderers don't want it anyway

[GusBob]

3. As a health care provider, I can tell you

That mental health concerns are the #1 health problem in this country. Why? Because it can affect people of all ages compared to most other health issues which are older age related.. Also, it is hard to treat AND there is a serious lack of access to care AND it is chronic, cyclic and self propagating AND it is pervasive in that it leads to a myriad of other social and health problems. Yes, including gun violence, which as leading cause of death makes it an health issue as well.

[lindysalsagal]

12. The reality no one wants to admit: Something like 20-25% of the population needs help

otherwise, the suicide rates wouldn't be so high. There's all the proof we need that mental health is being ignored.

Mental health care should be free and widely available. We are not "the greatest country in the world" until we provide that.

[relayerbob]

7. Start with the sick bastards in the Senate

That refuse to even discuss gun laws

[multigraincracker]

8. State Mental Health Hospitals have

been replace with State Prisons.

This does not help.

[mopinko]

10. the biggest psyche unit in illinois is cook county jail.

fortunately the sheriff there is quite aware of this. he's the kind of guy who will take whatever someone offers to help his inmates. i know someone who set up a flock of chickens on the jail grounds.

he's worked hard to get access to medication after release for his frequent flyers. he's partners w hospitals who help get housing for THEIR frequent flyers.

i dont know what kind of stats he's racked up, but he does keep getting re-elected.

[mopinko]

9. we rly need a brain health moon shot.

we know so little, really. right now it's about checking boxes on a list of symptoms that could land most of us in a locked ward. and those lists have a hard sexist bias.
they cant sort ptsd from tbi, and we can still only dx cte in an autopsy. advanced imaging can tell the difference, the va has this tech. the proper course of treatment is vastly different. the wrong course is damaging. but how many people can access that?

most medication is still a game of roulette, even tho a dna test can narrow that down greatly. yet it isnt done routinely, afaik.

at least now most people can get mmj, and increasingly mushrooms.

but for the most part, we're stuck in the 50's on a lot of this.

[Model35mech]

11. "they" need to be careful what they want. Mental disorders impact 25%-30% of the population

every year. The avg extended family of 3 generations of a person's family includes a person with a mental disorder (whether it's been diagnosed or not, and usually not).

Realize that at present nothing near 25% of the population seek's the assistance with their mental health problems that they should. As a consequence any and every database of the mentally 'ill' only includes those thoughtful enough to seek help, and those who are so ill that they end-up adjudicated to be a threat to themselves or others.

The great majority of people with mental disorders have never sought assistance/therapy and will NEVER have their names in database of those dx'd as mentally disordered. The great majority of these people are also not dangerous to themselves or others.

To have GOOD mental wellness background checks requirese EXCELLENT mental wellness databases and such things simply don't exist due to state and municipal failures to do data entry and maintenance on required databases.

Considering how negative social consequences follow from knowledge of a person's mental disorders, GOOD Databases will probably NEVER be available in the continuing social epoch of stigmatization of mental disorders.



In another existence on DU I was an advocate cautioning against this 'common sense' approach, and many of that existence's 30000+ posts were advocating fair and just treatment of people with mental disorders.

Although you can find a lot of anecdotal evidence of 'strangeness', loner behavior, etc in newspaper accounts of gun murder's it turns out that nationally less than 40% of gun murders are ever solved as to WHO did it. That 40% mostly never sought mental health care, and so we have a very sketchy record of contribution of mental wellness histories for the known 40% of shooters. And we really can't say anything about the other 60% whose mental status is unknowable because their identities are unknown.

If you are going to advocate more strict consideration of mental health standards for gun ownership (and I really do believe not everyone should be allowed to possess let alone own a gun for mental health reasons) realize that project's success depends very much u[on greater insertion of law enforcement into surveillance, and therapist's/counselors' reporting , and the creation of virtually unprotect-able databases and phishing searches of people's mental health records for other than 'threats to the public'.

Just a brief application of imagination will reveal how such projects are going to provide tremendous opportunities for abusing people with histories mental disorders for the sake of 'doing something' that seems common-sense appropriate, but which is really a very sketchy response to the need to 'do something' about that which we know so poorly.

[lindysalsagal]

13. Well said. We don't want abusers running things.

[lame54]

14. But, enough about the Republican primaries